Wednesday, January 30, 2008

My memory tricked me...

...when I wrote the Jan. 3 post! These 2 scenes where not animated by Dick.

They were animated by Neil Boyle (over Ken's original). It was the first big close up of the Thief Neil had ever been assigned to work on 'solo', having previously done mid-shots. Dick wanted to take what Ken had done in his first draft of the scene and get Neil to change some timings and add some secondary actions, but also add some new bits of performance that he'd come up with since. When Neil finished his rough animation and shot a line test he called Dick over to have a look. Dick watched it and immediately fell about laughing hysterically, saying, "You've animated yourself! He's looking around the room the same way you do! Ha ha ha ha ha!" Dick then grabbed Roy Naisbitt, who was passing by, and said, "Look at this! Watch the eyes!" And then they both fell about laughing and called over Raymond Guillaumet, followed by any other passing people, until there was a small crowd watching, pointing and laughing loudly.The scene was approved though, without any changes, but it did go to prove that whoever picked up one of the Thief's scenes would slightly inject their own personality into it, even if they were working over a rough that Ken had originally set down.The other great thing about the 'Thief and the boots' scene was that every element was hand matted so that the amazing John Leatherbarrow could darken the Thief animation to suit the gloom of the shop interior, and brighten up the background painting of the exterior so that it's bathed in morning sunlight. Subtle and beautiful!

Many apologies for my bad memory in regards to these 2 beautiful scenes. The upside is that I always hope that people will let us know if we get things wrong, as happened in this case.Nothing is written in stone. So I'm actually excited that the blog format allows for this to happen. It's not just a medium that informs the reader but also a research tool for us who write the posts - and it creates accountability as anybody can challenge what we discuss in the comments and create something that has multiple points of view.